They gathered up anything they found that seemed out of place; the shop was supposed to be a pottery-making enterprise, but it had been closed up for months, and any trace of clay or wheels was long gone. Jess found a box of what looked like loose papers, but he realised, with a sickening jolt, that they were the interiors of books ... ripped out of their bindings and tossed in sheaves into a pile. Not rare works; he knew most of the titles, and checked the rest on his Codex. Common black market copies, every one.
Why destroy them? Burners burnt books in protest, as statements. It seemed strange to destroy them in private.
It was Thomas who put the puzzle together, from scraps of metal and paper, leather and glue. He looked at everything they assembled in the centre of the shop and said, 'They built Greek Fire containers into the covers of hollowed-out books. Why would they do that?'
Wolfe rose from his chair and looked at the tangle of clues, and nodded. 'You bait a trap with what the creature you're hunting likes best. Scholars love original books. The firebombs would have been layered under real ones, inside of containers. All they have to do is arrange for the lot to be confiscated and tagged back to storage.'
Khalila put a hand to her mouth. 'If Scholars had sent them to the Archive ...'
'The Archive might have been damaged,' Wolfe finished for her. 'It's always a goal of the Burners, though it's very rare to find such a plot within Alexandria itself. They usually target outside the city, but this knot of snakes seems unusually venomous. I wanted you to see this. Reason it for yourself.'
Jess remembered with sudden, vivid clarity the dark, smoky scars and gouges left on the steps of the London Serapeum, the day he'd run from the lions. The Burners had been going after St Paul's for years, long before his birth; they'd killed hundreds in that particular attack when he was nine. He'd been a long way off, and still seen the smoke rising up, heard the distant screaming. It had been the worst attack anywhere, except the assaults that went on constantly in America, where the Burners had succeeded in shutting down four of the largest of that country's daughter libraries. Technically, those Serapeum remained open, but no one dared to visit.
'They're getting bolder,' Glain said. 'Every year, more attacks. Why can't the Library stop them?'
'We try,' Wolfe said. 'They've learnt to avoid the Codex; when they make plans, it's through paper message or messengers. Never anything an Obscurist can track or see.'
'Sir?' Thomas looked up from his contemplation of the pile in front of him. His face was set, and very serious. 'How close did they come?'
'Not close this time.' Wolfe looked around at them, and for the first time, Jess felt he was treating with them as genuinely worth his effort. 'And yet, they are here, and that is troubling. Some of you may have grown up in places where the Burners are tolerated, even encouraged, but believe this: if you wear the band of the Library, you are their enemy. That is why we are putting so much time into training you to be vigilant.'
'Scholar?' Izumi raised her hand, a little hesitantly. She waited for his nod to continue. 'Isn't it the job of the High Garda to pursue them? Not Scholars?'
'It was,' Wolfe said. 'Now it's ours as well. I don't like it either, but that is the world in which we live. That is the world I am training you to enter.' He walked towards the door, only looking back to say, 'Mind the tripwire. It still has a bite.'
They had a silent, grim walk back to Ptolemy House. Jess could still smell traces of alchemical compounds from the Greek Fire, a ghost of the man burning in St Pancras Station. That is the world I am training you to enter. Jess had grown up a smuggler, understanding that books were a precious commodity, understanding that his family catered to a basic human hunger.
He didn't understand the Burners. He didn't want to understand them. He wanted to go back to a safe place where he didn't have to think about these things any more ... but he was honest enough to know that there were no safe places. Maybe never had been.
And maybe that was why his father had sent him, to learn that lesson, as much as anything else.
Jess dreamt of automaton lions running at his heels, but when he turned in the dream, slow and weightless, it wasn't lions after all. It was a young man carrying a bottle of Greek Fire, who upended it over his head, screaming.
It was his own face.
Dario stumbled in drunk in the middle of the night, and set to snoring. He sounded like a broken chain being beaten on metal, and it didn't stop. Jess thought wearily about smothering him, but that seemed imprudent, so he dressed in the dark and slipped downstairs.
The common room sofa would do just as well for tonight. Tomorrow, he'd move his small chest of belongings to one of the empty rooms. Should have already done it, he thought. Dario would be pleased to have his private room again.
When he got to the common room, the door was closed. He tried the handle. Locked.
He put his ear to the door, but it was silent as the grave on the other side. Someone might have locked it by mistake; it had happened more than once, but if Portero had brought one of his girlfriends back, they were going to get a nasty surprise. Jess didn't intend to let anything stand between him and the few meagre hours of rest he had left.
He stretched up for the key on the ledge above the door. After the first few times of being locked out, Thomas had provided a key, which had come in handy more than once.
The door opened without so much as a creak. He expected to find the room empty.
Instead, he found Morgan Hault.
She was dressed in a thick Egyptian dressing gown, and her brown hair was plaited into a rope that hung over her left shoulder. He hesitated in the doorway. Her back was turned to him, and as he started to say her name, something made him stop.
There was a strange, buzzing feeling in his head. He recognised it. It was the same feeling he had when one of the Archive tags was activated, and drew energy away from him in the process. The same as the drain he'd felt when using the map to track Santi, only that had been so much worse.
'Morgan?'
She turned, fast, and he saw something he couldn't comprehend. It didn't make sense. She was holding a blank, but the letters were not on the page of the book. Not ink on paper, the way that the Codex mirrored them from the original book in the archive. The ink was there, but ghostly. Shimmering.
The letters were floating in gold and orange, sparking and turning, twisting in slow, fluid patterns. Rows and columns, cubes of them, all shifting and whispering and moving as much as a foot above the blank, and the storm in his head reached a sudden horrible intensity just as Morgan dropped the book.
As the blank slid free of her fingers, something followed it - a kind of string, was how he thought of it, except that it was a string of strange, pulsing light. Almost like a static shock, but too delicate, too lingering.
A string of orange light that broke just as the blank thumped to the carpeted floor.
She didn't say a word. Her eyes had gone wide, but then they narrowed in calculation, and she backed slowly away.
He staggered and braced himself against the doorway. Just breathed for a moment, and then reached over and closed the common room door. Then he locked it and pocketed the key.
'What was that?' he asked, and when she didn't answer, he pushed free and stepped forward. She backed up. 'You're not leaving until you tell me.'
'I don't know what happened,' she said. He could see her trembling. 'The blank must be--'
'Don't try it. The blank isn't defective, and I'm not a fool.'
'Jess--'
'I can only think of one explanation for what I just saw, and that is that you're an Obscurist,' he said.
'I'm not!'
'Don't lie to me again.'
He saw her whole body go tense and still. She was considering whether or not to come at him for the key, and whether or not she'd win if she picked that battle. It lasted a long few seconds before she took in a breath and said, simply, 'Yes.'
Now that she'd admitted it, the shock roll
ed over him. Obscurist. But they weren't supposed to ever leave the confines of the Iron Tower. What was someone like that doing here, disguised as a student?
Maybe that's the point. Maybe it's another test, and we're supposed to find her out. 'Does Wolfe know what you are?'
She snapped the answer back too quickly. 'He doesn't know anything.'
'Bit of advice, if you're going to lie, learn to do it better.' Jess's pulse was racing, but it was as much with adrenaline as fear. I've seen an Obscurist at work. That seemed as impossible as petting a unicorn. 'Relax. I won't hurt you.'
That made her frown, and her voice turned firmer. 'Do you realise how arrogant that makes you sound? If I'm an Obscurist, do you really think you have the ability to hurt me?'
'Probably,' he said. 'They don't keep you in the Iron Tower because you can easily defend yourselves, now, do they? You're not some sorcerer out of a story. What you do is alchemy, not magic. You're not going to throw a spell at me. Alchemy requires preparation.'
'I wasn't talking about magic,' Morgan said. 'I can look after myself. And, if you push me, I will.' She had a knife now, and he hadn't even seen her draw it. From the way she held it, he could see she was comfortable with the weapon ... and she would be, if she'd actually survived a war to get here.
But there really would be no advantage in fighting, for either of them. He held up his hands. 'Good point. Maybe I should just call the High Garda and have you escorted to the Iron Tower.'
He'd hit a nerve. A big one. She took a tighter grip on the knife, and he saw the flash of panic in her eyes. She didn't want to go there. Not at all.
'All right,' she said, and tried to make it sound casual. 'Wolfe knows all about me. Happy now?' He might not have believed her if he hadn't just seen her lie, but that, surprisingly, was the truth. Though why Wolfe would help an Obscurist was another thing entirely.
'What are you going to do?' she demanded.
'I don't know.' He nudged the blank on the floor with his foot, but it was back to just a plain volume, no different than any other he'd ever held. 'Is this thing dangerous?'
'It's a blank. Why would it be dangerous?'
'Because I just saw it do something I've never seen a blank do before.'
'That's not the book,' Morgan said. 'It's just simple manipulation of the formulae behind the mirroring. I can do that with any blank. They're all connected to the Codex, by their nature; it's the principle of similarity. As above, so below. It's what the Doctrine of Mirroring is based on. I was finding a way in.'
She said it as if that was self-explanatory, which maybe it was, to her; it was the same offhand way Thomas talked about engineering, or Khalila about dizzying levels of mathematics, as if anyone ought to be able to see how it worked.
It made him feel stupid, and annoyed by it. 'So you're an Obscurist who came here to pretend to be one of us,' he said. 'Why? Is this another one of Wolfe's bloody stupid tests? Are we supposed to discover your secret? Then I think I win. Though it was stupid of you to be down here doing this.'
'It's not a test! I wish it was. That would be so ... simple.' The flush was fading from her cheeks now, and she walked over to the fire to warm her hands. 'And I didn't do it here by choice. The blanks work best when they are near each other. Principles of similarity, the sympathetic energy grows stronger. I locked the door. What are you doing here?'
'Looking for sleep,' he said. 'Which I'm not going to get. If you're not here to test us, why are you here? Shouldn't you be in the Tower?'
'I'm not going to the Iron Tower,' she said, very quietly. 'That's the whole point of this. They were looking all over England for me by the time I made it past the border. I won't be here long. Once I have what I came for, I'll be on my way again.'
'Khalila was right. She told me not to trust you,' Jess said. He sat down on the divan, because he didn't think he had the strength to keep standing; too many surprises today, and not enough rest. 'What are you after?'
'What do you think? I want my life! I want to erase any trace of ... what I am.' She wrapped her arms around her body, as if she was chilled to the bone, despite the fire. 'I was coming here, you know, that wasn't a lie. I'd already been accepted for training when I first accidentally opened up formulae; Scholar Tyler in Oxford saw me do it when I was reading a blank at the Serapeum. He told me opening the formulae leaves a kind of ... record that the Obscurists could trace back to me, eventually. I had to destroy my record in the Codex itself if I didn't want to end up in the Iron Tower.'
She paused, but Jess didn't say anything. Her voice had the ring of truth. More, it had the ring of desperation.
'I could open formulae, but actually altering it was impossible to do from Oxford, and even from the London Serapeum; I tried. Scholar Tyler told me that the closer I could get to the Iron Tower, the better chance I had of changing it. I already had an opening here in the training class. It was my only choice, they were looking for a stray Obscurist in London by the time I left.' That struck some kind of thought in her, and she looked at him with sudden, real distrust. 'Did someone send you here to find me? Did you suspect me?'
'Not me. I was just looking for a quiet place to kip. You should have put a sign up. No entrance, alchemical sabotage in progress.'
'Was that a joke?'
'Not a very funny one.' Jess still couldn't quite take it in. An Obscurist. He'd come to think they weren't real, or if they were, that they were incredibly old, with beards that stretched to the floor. He'd never imagined one his own age. Or a girl, for that matter. 'You said Wolfe knows. How did he find out?'
'He caught me,' she said. 'I tried my best, but if I'm not concentrating sometimes I reveal the formulae without meaning to do it, and ... he saw. I thought he'd send me straight to the Tower. Instead, he told me to do what I needed and get out as soon as possible. He warned me my time was running out, and he couldn't protect me.'
The idea of Wolfe protecting any of them made Jess feel oddly off balance. Wolfe was their enemy - or, at least, their judge, jury, and executioner. What would move him to keep Morgan's secret?
He didn't think she knew, or if she did, that she'd tell him. 'If you came just to remove this record from the Codex, it means you won't be staying once you do it. Right?'
She was watching him with just as much wariness as he felt himself. 'All I need is a few more days. Are you going to turn me in?'
He should, he knew; if anything would get him a posting at the Library, completely eliminate any chance that he'd be sent off ... there she was, his golden goose. A stray Obscurist, the rarest of all birds by her own admission.
He knew that was how he should see her, but all he could see was a girl. He'd spent his entire childhood as a fugitive from one thing or another. From his father. From the Garda. From his future.
So he said, 'No. I won't turn you in.'
'As simple as that?'
'As simple as that. I understand what it's like to run. Besides, you said Wolfe already knows. Who would I tell?'
Morgan closed her eyes tight in sudden relief. Now that she wasn't looking at him, he could stare freely. It was the same face, but there was something different about her, too. Something subtle and strong she'd taken great pains to hide, and wasn't hiding any more. Not from him.
'Morgan. How old are you? Really?'
'I didn't lie. I'm sixteen,' she said, and opened her eyes again. He looked away. 'I've been running for months. Training in secret.'
'Training with who?'
'I won't tell you that, Jess. I know you have secrets of your own, so let me keep mine.'
'All right. Are you really from Oxford?'
He met her eyes again, briefly, but it didn't help. If she was lying, she was better prepared to do it well now. 'I was born there,' she said. 'My father's still there. And I'm going back as soon as I'm done. Another day or two, I promise. You won't have to keep my secret for long.'
'How do you plan to get out of Alexandria?'
Her lips curled a littl
e on the edges, making shadows. 'I'll fail one of the tests, and lose a lottery drawing, and I'll be off. No one will suspect a thing, and by that time the records will only show that I'm Morgan Hault, failed student. No one will know I was ever anything else.'
'Well, while you're altering records, put me at the top of the class. It'd be a nice change.'
She crossed to sit down on the divan across from him, and pulled her feet up beneath her. Graceful and easy, and deceptively familiar; he'd seen her in this pose many times. It's a role. She's just playing at being one of us. But it didn't seem that way. It had seemed to him that she'd genuinely relaxed in his presence, as if she felt safe.
'Do you know what you're giving up?' he asked. 'I know you didn't ask for it, but being an Obscurist must be important work. You'd be part of the Library for life, automatically a gold band ... they'd pamper you like a queen.'
'You really don't know anything about it, do you?' She rested her chin on a fist and braced her elbow on the worn velvet arm of the divan. Across the room, the fire cracked and sparked, the room felt warm and peaceful. Strange, given what they were discussing. 'I told you, Obscurists are taken. Dragged from their families as soon as they're identified. Forced into the Iron Tower. Those gold bands you speak of? For an Obscurist, it's a collar locked around your throat that never comes off. No freedom. No way to leave.' She studied him for a few silent seconds. 'I'd rather die. You would, too. I know that much about you, Jess.'
'I expect you do,' he said. 'If you're using the blanks to get into the Codex and alter your records, that means you can read those records,' he said. 'Which means you also know everything they know about all of us. You're too sharp not to have done your research.'
That got him a sudden, sharp look, as if he'd unnerved her. 'And?'
'I need to know what it says about me.'
'Not much. Your father should be more careful when he writes to you. I could tell that it was some type of code. I don't know what it meant, but if I thought he was sending you instructions, someone else might have guessed it too. They could be watching you.' She picked at a loose thread on the arm of the divan. 'I haven't been able to get deeper than that. It takes time, I told you, and I've been more concerned about finding my own records than yours.'